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"Await Your Reply' by Dan Chaon. I just return to this one again and again.

But this time I'm reading it on my new kindle! :)

I finished 'We Are Oblivion' by Michael Sonbert and I loved the hell out of it.

Well, get into the book club discussion and have your say. Seems everyone around here was reading it over the last month or two yet there's been like four people comment on it in book club. For a bunch of people that love reading and do a lot of it, The Cult really doesn't get into book club. It seriously makes no sense and does my head in. I'm almost sick of trying with it.

/whingewhingewhinge

It seemed to me that there were a lot of people ready to discuss it but you kept telling them to shut it and not post spoilers yet!

I went to that thread to post and I was utterly turned off by you chiding people not to talk about the book in the book club DISCUSSION thread. Then you have another ranting whine just like this one in THAT thread!

So please don't berate me here, too.

I am reading 'The Tiger: A True Story of Vengeance and Survival' by John Vaillant.

I'm reading Imperial Bedrooms by Bret Easton Ellis. It might not be quite up to the standard or length of some of his other work but it's still enjoyable. I think much of the disappointment with this novel is due to the fact that it had been seven years since Lunar Park came out and it could be another seven year before he releases another book, if he ever does at all.

I liked Poppy Z. Brite's Lost Souls and Drawing Blood a lot when I was in high school. I also liked Wormwood, which was a short story collection. I haven't read anything else, but she took a long break from horror to write about chefs in New Orleans. She seems to like that city a lot.

I had pretty much the same experience with Poppy Z. Brite myself, except I also read a bunch of those chef stories in the past year or so (I think from The Devil You Know) and they were pretty good. Not strictly horror, no, but certainly on the darker side of things.

Yeah, I read somewhere that Poppy associates him/herself with the male gender. It's pretty confusing. I heard about it a while ago and seem to remember Poppy considering himself male (these pronouns are confusing) while having the body of a female and perhaps not planning on going through surgery. And I just looked him up on wikipedia and it says, "He self-identifies with gay males, and as of August 2010, has begun the process of gender reassignment," so I must have heard about his gender stuff before then. But then right after that sentence in wikipedia, it says, "Brite has written that, while gender theorists like Kate Bornstein would call him a "nonoperative transsexual", Brite himself would not insist on a pedantic label, writing "I'm just me."

Which is a little confusing. I suppose someone who is "nonoperative" can go through part of the surgery rather than complete it in its entirety considering I imagine the "nonoperative" aspect has to do with having medical issues that would interfere with certain aspects of the process rather than all aspects of it.

OMG you guys I officially love Jack Ketchum. I read The Girl Next Store awhile back, but since Wednesday I've read Off Season, Offspring and The Woman. I can't believe I like stuff this gross and violent but damn, I just can't put it down! Also got a collection of his short stories.

Also, apparently, I read the version of Off Season that he wrote originally, not the edited version published by Ballentine in 1980-ish. I didn't realize there was another version out there until I read the afterword by the author. Really glad I didn't read it as it was first published because that would've been lame.

I bought Off Season after reading The Girl Next Door a few months ago and made sure it was the unedited version. Not because I really enjoyed reading The Girl Next Door but more because it's interesting to see how far a book can push things.

OMG you guys I officially love Jack Ketchum. I read The Girl Next Store awhile back, but since Wednesday I've read Off Season, Offspring and The Woman. I can't believe I like stuff this gross and violent but damn, I just can't put it down! Also got a collection of his short stories.

Aaaaand, hell yeah, it's all on my kindle.

I've read The Girl Next Door and Off Season. I want to read Old Flames and Offspring next.

There's something about his writing. Plot wise not much happens. Just a matter of finding a way to put somebody into a position to be tortured. But the writing is really good and just draws you in.

I read Old Flames before bed last night (it's really more of a novella) and it was alright. He's not brilliant, and most of the plots are predictable, but you're right, there's just something about the way he writes. So far, I have to say that I think Off Season is his best work. Offspring was just about as good, and The Woman was good, but towards the end I was like, "lol, wut? riiiiiight"....

I need to switch to some lighter reading over the next couple of days...

The only book of her's that I've read is Exquisite Corpse - which I really liked.

Where do you suggest I go from there?

Also that was years and years ago - perhaps I should give it a reread one of these days.

Actually, I meant to say Exquisite Corpse made me an instant fan of her's. I've only read her short "Calcutta, Lord of Nerves" in the Zombies: Encounters with the Hungry Dead and as you know, Lost Souls. I'd recommend both of those stories. Even though Brite repulses me with her graphic stories, I find I can't stop reading, cause I am morbidly fascinated.

Also today I finished a novel by George Steiner that had been on my list for more than a year: The Portage to San Cristobal of AH.

It's a weird, weird, weird little book. I have great respect for Steiner as a critic and I wanted to see what he's like as a novelist. He's got (surprise, surprise) a highly erudite style, and a surprisingly avant-garde way of going about the writing-a-novel thing. Sometimes it feels forced but when it works well, it's extremely satisfying.

It's about a group of Nazi hunters fighting a 90-year-old man whom they believe to be Hitler hiding in Brazil.

Phil, do you like Ira Levin? Have you ever read The Boys from Brazil? Your description of that George Steiner book made me think of it.

I haven't read any Levin, but I have seen the Gregory Peck film of The Boys from Brazil. It's a great movie.

This Steiner book is far more serious than that; it's very short and very psychological and the focus, as always with Steiner, is on language, language itself and its effects on the mind, etc. I'm glad I read it.

I just finished Houellebecq's Platform. I really liked it. It was quite thought-provoking. Yet I have to say during reading I felt he is better at essay than fiction. Nonetheless a very good read. Next I think will be Slaughterhouse-Five.

I'm reading Red Dragon again because we watched it last night and I got inspired.

I liked that book a lot. I thought Dolarhyde and the blind woman who's name evades me made a really interesting combo of characters.

I thought Lambs was cool too, Hannibal and Hannibal rising... less so.

Yeah I only read Red Dragon and start Lambs. I really enjoyed Red Dragon, extremely well written. That kind of genre isn't usually my thing though

Yeah, as far as crime drama goes, it's not a bad series. Something didn't sit right for me about book 3 though. The prequel wasn't too bad I guess, it has a totally different feel to it though as Hannibal is a lot closer to the reader in that one.

I thought Hannibal Rising was unnecessary, because Lector's the kind of bad guy who should just be BAD, without the explanation. I was okay with him being deliciously (heh) wicked, without Harris trying to garner sympathy for his childhood and making him just another messed psycho with a sad story.

I definitely like Red Dragon and Silence of the Lambs the best out of all them.

That's the same problem Rob Zombie's Halloween remake had. Don't rationalize his actions through childhood problems, he's just pure eeeevil and leave it at that.

I really liked Hannibal the novel. It was the first Harris I'd read, and was astonished at the level of detail and research. This was before I started becoming a more discerning reader, though. Red Dragon was a better story.

Red Dragon is the template for serial-killer stories. It has probably lost some of its impact since it came out because of all the followers (many of them pretty bad), but it its genre it was a precursor and still packs some good punch.

That's the same problem Rob Zombie's Halloween remake had. Don't rationalize his actions through childhood problems, he's just pure eeeevil and leave it at that.

I agree with that, but I really liked the prequel aspect of it while I wasn't crazy about the rest of the movie because it was pretty much Halloween by the numbers. Now as far as the sequel, I loved it unlike almost everyone who has seen it.

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